When Children Grieve

Intergenerational loss, emotional masking, and why healing often waits until adulthood

It has been seven years since my father died.

Receiving the news was devastating, but what lingered—and still lingers—was the aftermath. The phone calls. The unanswered questions. The systems I was suddenly expected to navigate while barely holding myself together. The finality of death collided with something else entirely: regret over lost time.

My parents divorced when I was young, and the years that followed fractured our connection. We reconnected later, but death made the earlier distance permanent. There would be no more opportunities to fix what was unfinished. That reality settled into my body in a way I didn’t yet have language for.

A few years after my father’s death, my granddaughter lost her own father.

Watching her absorb that loss reopened wounds I hadn’t fully acknowledged—let alone healed. I saw myself in her, not because our stories were identical, but because the disruption was familiar. The sudden rupture. The expectation that life would simply continue. School. Routines. Smiles for adults who didn’t know what to say.

She had joined what I describe as the sorority of daddyless daughters.

And like so many children, she did what I had done. What I had perfected.

She put on her mask.

She compartmentalized.

The grandmother in me wanted to protect her from the weight of that loss. I wanted to tell her it was okay to feel whatever she felt—or nothing at all. That grief doesn’t follow a schedule. That talking helps, but silence is sometimes safer. That support from a licensed therapist isn’t weakness—it’s care.

The doer in me recognized the hypocrisy.

I could name the coping mechanisms with ease. I could see how her strategies mirrored my own. And yet, for years, I had postponed my own healing—telling myself I would get to it eventually.

To be fair, I had reasons. There were children to raise. Careers to build. Crises to manage. Advocacy work to do. Survival often masquerades as productivity.

When I think about what I didn’t have then, I often return to a book I loved as a child—Breadsticks and Blessing Places by Candy Dawson. It’s out of print now, but I recently tracked down a copy for my granddaughter. The book didn’t rush grief or try to fix it. It simply made room for it—naming ordinary spaces as places where children could feel, remember, and heal. Looking back, I realize how rare that kind of permission was—and how much it still matters.

But watching my granddaughter forced an uncomfortable question to the surface:

What do we actually do when children grieve?

Because they do grieve.

I grieved my parents’ divorce.

I grieved the loss of innocence that followed sustained trauma.

My granddaughter grieved the loss of her father.

She grieved again when her best friend was diagnosed with a serious health condition requiring surgery.

Children notice. They absorb. They internalize. They carry loss long before adults are willing to name it as grief.

And yet, we often treat childhood grief as something children will “bounce back” from—rather than something that shapes their emotional architecture.

In policy and practice, there has been growing acknowledgment that a five-year-old, a twelve-year-old, and a seventeen-year-old experience life differently. Their cognitive capacity differs. Their emotional vocabulary differs. Their ability to contextualize permanence differs.

Which means our responses must differ too.

Grief support cannot be one-size-fits-all.

It must account for developmental stages, family systems, cultural expectations, access to care, and the realities of schools that are often unequipped to respond to emotional loss—especially when it intersects with varying conditions at the child’s home.

This is where storytelling and policy meet.

Because when we fail to listen to the stories of grieving children—and the adults they become—we design systems that overlook them. We underfund mental health supports. We overburden schools. We normalize emotional masking. And we wonder later why so many adults struggle to name their pain—or ask for help.

Helping children grieve isn’t just about therapy sessions or crisis moments.

It’s about permission.

It’s about language.

It’s about adults doing their own healing so children don’t inherit silence.

Reflection

Take a moment to notice where grief, change, or responsibility has asked you to grow up quickly. What did you learn to carry silently—and what are you only now beginning to name?

Where in your life have you learned to function well without fully tending to what hurts? What has that strategy protected you from—and what has it cost?

As you think about the children in your life, or the child you once were, what kind of permission feels most needed right now? To speak, to rest, to ask for help, or simply to feel without explanation?

Let these questions meet you gently, without urgency or expectation.

A Final Word

Grief doesn’t always demand answers. Often, it asks for acknowledgment.

Healing rarely arrives on schedule, and it doesn’t move in a straight line. Sometimes it waits quietly until we are finally willing to listen—to ourselves, and to those who come after us.

If this reflection stirred something unfinished, know this: noticing the pattern is not failure. It is the beginning of care. And care, offered honestly, has a way of changing what we pass on.

With gratitude,

Dr. Melanie